Progress and Updates

As the deadline for my project gets closer and closer, it is imperative that I move ever closer to completing it.  Over the course of this past week, I have made major strides towards accomplishing this goal. 

In my last meeting with my peers earlier this week, I had a lot of things to think about.  Namely, the layout of my magazine and the content of the double page spread.  The first thing I want to talk about is the content for the story.  I wanted this material to be largely focused on an interview I would conduct with a field biologist whom I have mentioned in previous posts.  At the meeting, I explained my frustrations regarding how Ms. Mason has yet to have responded to my email with answers to my questions.  I'm concerned about whether or not I will even be able to include this section in my project and if I will have to change the way I wanted my story to go.  The only good thing that happened was that she did send me an email on March 29th that said she would be busy for the next two days.  Since her first free day will be this Saturday, I'm hoping that she will have time to answer my questions.  However, if I do not receive a response by the end of this weekend, I will be forced to abandon this idea for the sake of finishing this project in a way that I can be proud of.

The other thing that happened to me at the meeting was that I was forced to think about how I would actually construct the layout for my magazine.  I asked the group of people I was meeting with if they knew of any online software I could use, but they had little experience in the area and could offer me no feasible examples.  One of them did suggest Photoshop, which I knew one of my friends is using, but I knew I couldn't use that program because of cost issues.  Having made little progress with my group members, I decided to look through the Internet for websites that would be of use to me.  I quickly stumbled upon a site called Lucidpress.  This site allowed me to sign up for free and offered me opportunities to create a magazine layout that looked both creatively unique and professional.  I'm excited to continue working with it in the future and to hopefully posting some progress pictures in my next blog post.  

Despite the setbacks I may be facing, I am confident that I am still moving closer and closer to my goal.

Citations:

"Easy from the Start." Lucidpress. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2017.

Questions!

Yesterday, I posted about conducting and interview with Ms. Mason.  

This morning, I set about accomplishing this goal.  The first thing I needed to do was to write up some questions to email her.  I worked towards doing this by rereading her bio, which was located on the contact us tab.  From the information provided there, I was able to write these questions:  

Why did you get into this area of study and work and what is your favorite part about it?

In your experience, how often are what people consider weeds invasive species and how 

often are they actually native plants that are beneficial to the environment?

What were your responsibilities and experience concerning "weeds" when you worked as a field biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission?

How do herbicides work to remove plants that would be considered weeds?  What effects do they have on other plants in the ecosystem?

What is an invasive plant removal contract and what is your experience with them?

What are the dangers of non-native plants within the Florida Everglades?

Once I finished writing the questions, I emailed them to her through the email that had been provided with her bio.  

Hopefully these questions will help me to learn more about the subject and be able to form a more complete story.  Since she didn't answer today, however, it's a bit of a waiting game.  Hopefully, she will respond tomorrow though.  I look forward to her insight on the subject!

Citations:
"Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council Chairman and Board of Directors." FLEPPC. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.

Interview?

Since I have been working on the design of my magazine, I feel that I have allowed myself to neglect the story I want to write.  Therefore, it is time to revisit the story!

A while before (a couple weeks ago, I think), I asked Ms. Stoklosa about what I could do for my story, and she suggested I do an interview.  While I liked the sound of that idea, at the time, it only allowed me to continue on with my project in the direction I had been going and had not produced any concrete elements within the story I wished to construct.  However, I still want to utilize that idea.  That's why I have recently been searching for someone to interview.  Well, actually that might be a bit of an exaggeration because it is more accurate to say that I stumbled across a person who seemed like a good fit for an interview and I went on from there. 

While I was researching weeds, I made my way to http://www.fleppc.org/.  This website is that of the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council.  It even had its own magazine about weeds called Wildland Weeds.  I looked through the magazine, which was abundant in information but was a bit lacking in the formatting department; nonetheless, it was cute and educational.  After going through some of the other information on the page, I began to remember and consider the idea of an interview because obviously the people who put together the magazine and were major members of the organization would be very knowledgeable about weeds.  

This brought me to searching the website for the contributors and eventually finding them under the "Contact Us" tab.  Reading through the bios was fun and reinforced the idea that these people were extremely knowledgeable and experienced in this field.  In addition to providing information about these people, their bios also included contact information, as the tab title had stated.  I decided to email Christen Mason, the Chair of the Land Resources Bureau, South Florida Water Management District.  

In my email, I explained my project and asked her if she would like to answer some questions about weeds.  Her response time to the email was super fast; it only took her two hours to get back to me.  She was excited about the prospect of the interview and agreed to it wholeheartedly.  

While my email response time is not nearly as impressive as hers, I hope the content in my next email will make up for the wait.  I plan on emailing her with a list of questions tomorrow.  I'll make sure to include my questions in my next post.  Hopefully, Ms. Mason will keep up her reputation of fast response time so that I can include some of her responses in my next post as well.  We'll just have to wait and see!

Citations:
"FLEPPC." Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2017.

Meetings

I was recently able to meet with different people to discuss my project in two separate meetings, with my peers and with my teacher.  Both brought me insightful information concerning the direction of my project, and I look forward to utilizing it.

The first meeting took place on Tuesday with my peers.  All of the five people I met with were working on film openings, so their comments weren’t always following the same kind of applicability that I had imgained.  From the presentation of my idea, however, I was able to notice some problems with the preliminary layout of my project, such as the single page Table of Contents and arrangement of the Double Page spread.  These issues were largely cleared up with the second meeting.

The second discussion took place with my teacher Ms. Stoklosa.  I raised to her my concerns regarding the unbroken text on the right side of my double page spread, and she suggested a sidebar.  I also told her that I was thinking about possibly switching the cover page image with the image on the left page of the double page spread, but she agreed with my initial vision of an intense visual component on the double page spread.  She also showed me some examples that looked like the kind of style I wanted to emulate.  I really liked this example because it had both an engaging visual component and a sidebar.  So I will be leaving the picture of the dandelion where it is.  However, I still want to try and fix the cover image to make it look more engaging.  For my table of contents, she confirmed my concerns that my Table of Contents was too small.  Because of this, I think I will move to make it into a two-page layout where the two sides will produce a visual contrast, as the stories they concern will be different, such as with stories common to the magazine as well as feature stories. 

With all of this information of consider, I decided to look up some examples of table of contents pages that followed the direction I want to go in right now since I already some examples of double page spreads.  These two articles (1) (2) were especially helpful, and I would really like to emulate the kind of layout that was presented in them because of the engaging visuals and contrast between large stories and smaller stories.

These suggestions and pieces of information will help to promote a more directed approach towards creating a fully realized magazine, and I can't wait to implement them!

Citations:
Design, Kalico. "Stowaway Spring 2014." Pinterest. N.p., 23 Jan. 2014. Web. 23 Mar. 2017.
"Discovery Channel Magazine September 2012 Table of Contents." Library Media Center. N.p., 20 Sept. 2012. Web. 23 Mar. 2017.

Nikola. "Structure of the Magazine." Magazine Designing. N.p., 14 Oct. 2013. Web. 23 Mar. 2017.

Let's Just Lay it All Out

I'm tackling this project by taking it one step at a time.  Now that I have a topic, preliminary photos, and a rough idea of the story I want to tell, I want to start with the layout of my magazine.  

The three things that I have to make layouts for are the cover page, table of contents, and the double-page spread.  Even though it was the latter of the list, I decided to start with the layout for the double-page spread.  The first thing I decided to do was to look up some examples.  This website shooed me away from the idea of putting text on both pages and towards using a larger photo than I had originally imagined.  This was my final result: 

This is a big step forward toward the kind of product I want to create, but I am not yet completely satisfied.  For one, I still need to figure out a tagline.  Another thing was that I need to find some way to break up the text on the other page.  I know from looking at other magazines that the text is commonly broken up with pictures or quotes, so I will try to find some that work well with the story.  That aside, I am really proud with the way it turned out, which would have been much harder without two resources (1) (2), which helped me to label the dandelion.

The next thing I decided to do was to create the layout for the cover page.  I wanted to take inspiration from National Geographic; therefore, I decided to plan for a cover page that had a emphasis on the main subject and with very few cover lines.  Taking after that, I was able to produce this:

I think I will change the location of the cover lines, but I do like the amount that are present.

Finally, I got to the table of contents.  I know that I didn't want to create a blocky layout, so I decided to go with the exact opposite: circles!  While searching for inspiration, I found this Pinterest post.  I liked the use of the hexagons, but I thought it would be better for my project to have everything a little more spaced out.  This caused me to create this:

I really like the way this one came out, but I think I might change the layout to go from a one page table of contents to a two page layout.  

These layouts for each of the components of my project will make it easier to put together the final product because I will know what I want it to look like, instead of just a nebulous idea in my head.  I'm looking forward to working off of these layouts in the future.  

Citations:
Labby, Mz. "Recognizing & Collecting Dandelions « Antlife." Pinterest. N.p., 18 Aug. 2012. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.
Lady Moxie Design | Erin Murray. "Design | Layout." Pinterest. N.p., 17 Feb. 2015. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.
Smith, Mol. "Micscape Microscopy and Microscope Magazine." Micscape Microscopy and Microscope Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.
"36 Stunning Magazine and Publication Layouts for Your Inspiration." Inspiration Hut. N.p., 08 July 2016. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

What am I Even Talking About?

Up to this point in time, all of the work that I have been putting into this project has gone towards choosing a topic.  Now, I have finally chosen something: weeds!  This subject may appear to contain little depth and be a very boring topic overall, but I'm going to endeavor to disprove the two aforementioned points.  I want to discuss certain things about these little hardy plants that often receive unearned hurt and not enough appreciation.

Although I have some exposure to weeds because of my own personal experience and the research I did earlier this week to know what I had taken pictures of, I, like most people, hadn't given much thought to weeds.  What is there to consider, you may ask.  To tell you the truth, I didn't think there was much there either.  I expected to go into my research and learn a couple random facts like how different types of invasive weeds have overcome certain landscapes and the like.  While there are plenty examples of this happening, there was so much more as well.

My first step in the weed research was to look up the definition of a weed.  According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, a weed is "a plant that is not valued where it is growing and is usually of vigorous growth; especially :  one that tends to overgrow or choke out more desirable plants".  From this definition, the interesting information comes from the interpretation of the wording.  Since the plant is not wanted where it is, they are immediately placed in a lower echelon in relation to the other flora that inhabit America's lawns.  The persistence of weeds is further elaborated upon in the second clause.  Although weeds aren't desired, they possess the necessary adaptations to survive and even thrive. These different characteristics would vary from species to species.

Now that I knew that what weeds were, I thought it would be best to move into what they do. From reading an article on the subject, I learned about what looking at the types of weeds that exist and where they are growing can tell about the land itself: whether the soil is high or low in nutrients or if it was dry or too wet. Since weeds have such an innate ability to grow and thrive, they will persist in situations where other, more "desirable" plants, often those that have been domesticated, will not.  And if certain types of weeds can grow under conditions that will choke out competitors, it becomes easy to discern the condition of the soil.  From this, farmers and gardeners would be able to adjust the the conditions appropriately to best promote the growth of their crops.  If people were more familiar with what the presence of certain plants signified, they could more effectively, and at a lower cost, manage their crops or flower beds or any other plants they were growing. 

So weeds can tell you the conditions of the soil, without any expensive lab equipment or other types of highly specialized tools. Still, I wondered what else weeds could do for us.  Could there be a link to something greater?  Could tap roots and weaving stems be holding together something much greater than just the ground we stand on?

These questions show the way to a more meaningful story that could be present in this seemingly simple subject.  However my story eventually forms, I think the inclusion of this information will greatly help with the understanding of weeds, I know it sure helped me.  This would probably be good information to include in the introduction of the story located on the double-page spread.  I look forward to further researching the subject and learning more about the greater impact of these "undesirables."

Citations:
Jay, Farmer. "What Is the Purpose of Weeds And Why Are They Important?" New Times Broward-Palm Beach. N.p., 18 May 2016. Web. 16 Mar.          2017.
"Weed." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.

Time for Photoshoot

Over the past few days, I have been fervently searching for the topic that would serve to be the main focus for my magazine.  In order to look further into my options, I decided that a photo shoot was in order or, more accurately, two photo shoots.  

So what I did was that I took my camera out with me around my yard and neighborhood and took pictures of the kinds of things that I had been considering for my project.  These included plants, spiders, and butterflies, all of which I got pictures of.  

I really liked the way this photo came out, the composition of the light versus the dark with the Eastern Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio glaucus) on the bottom third.  However, I'm not sure how well this photo would fit into the magazine; it's good by itself but perhaps it would not work well when combined with other elements.

The Zebra Longwing butterflies (Heliconius charitonia) were generally easier to photograph than the swallowtail (which flew really fast), but this picture was my favorite overall.  The location of the butterfly on the top third implies the motion of the descent just as well as the unfocused wings.   

With this picture, I began to explore the possibilities of putting a focus on plants.  Pictured here is a flower from what I originally thought was clover, but I learned through research that it is actually Oxalis and is commonly confused with clover.  If I decide to head forward in this direction, I would like to retake this picture or something of similar composition but changed in such a way that the background was comprised of green leaves instead of brown dying ones.

This picture is probably my favorite from the first photo shoot.  This small yellow flower was one that I was familiar with, having seen it all the time where I live, but I never learned the name of it.  From some quick research, I learned that the name of this weed is Asiatic Hawksbeard (Youngia japonica).

As I began with my second day of shooting, I decided to see if I could recapture the out-of-focus background that I found to have made the picture of the Hawksbeard so aesthetically pleasing.  Although I wasn't able to accomplish that goal with this picture, I did like how this photo of Spanish Needle (Bidens bipinnata) turned out.

I don't really want to end with this picture, but I do feel that it is important to include it.  This is a photo of a Star Spider (Gasteracantha cancriformis).  I managed to find one of these while I walked around my neighborhood, and I took several pictures of it, of which this photo was the best.  Still, the subject is out of focus.  Perhaps it was the wind that made this picture hard to take, but I think I'll stay away from spider pictures in the future because they are so small.


Looking at all of the different pictures I was able to take, I am most in favor of those of the butterflies and the weed flowers.  Perhaps a good direction to take with magazine would be to put a focus on those two subjects, although I feel that I now have a slight preference to the weeds.  Regardless, these pictures came out better than I could've hoped, so I'm looking forward to more photo shoots in the future!

Citations:
"Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio Glaucus)." Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterflies, Caterpillars, Chrysalis Photos : Gardens With Wings. N.p., n.d.       Web. 15 Mar. 2017.
"Florida Weed Identification." Florida Weed Identification. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.
"The Star Spider - Gasteracantha Cancriformis." The Star Spider - Gasteracantha Cancriformis. N.p., 23 Feb. 2014. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.
"Weeds." Garden Talk - Weeds. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.
"Weeds of the Southern United States." (1975): 10. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.
"Zebra Longwing - Heliconius Charitonia." Zebra Longwing - Heliconius Charitonia. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

It's Got to Look Pretty!

As the title implies, this post is all about "the look" of my magazine, specifically the cover.  

The first thing I did was to revisit the page that showed the "Top 10 Nature Magazines".  This gave me some ideas regarding the nature of the cover page.  I naturally gravitated toward the magazines that featured few cover lines, striking images, and an absence of yellow used solely for garnering attention.  (Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of yellow, but the color seems like it's being used to yell at the audience in these examples, and it's a bit jarring.)  I'd like to create a product where the main focus is the cover image and where the cover lines are present but not the main focus. 

Moving on from that decision, I began to look at other examples of magazine covers within my chosen genre.  To do that, I looked at nature.com.  There, I was able to look at recent issues of their magazine, and the one from the past week caught my eye specifically.  The cool colors of this issue of Nature were a step in the direction that I wanted to take.  However, the picture was computer generated, and I was looking to use a photograph for my front cover.  Therefore, there was still more research to be done.  

I continued to look up nature/science magazines, but this was a bit difficult because the most common results were concerning Nature, the specific magazine company that I had already researched.  However, I typed in “environmental magazines” and was able to find this blog.  It showed some good examples of what I would like to produce, especially the TIME magazine and the one from PhotoMedia.  I really liked the play on a famous picture done by the TIME magazine, but even more so did I enjoy the striking cover of the PhotoMedia sample with the lemur on the front that looked straight toward the camera.  Since taking a picture of a mammal or other high order animal could prove difficult, it may be in my best interest to work with either insects, arachnids, or plants.

Still, I wanted to keep looking at different possibilities, so I checked out some photos from the NWF's website.  These pictures may not have been magazine covers specifically, but the still provided ideas. Looking at this website, I saw even more examples of really great
beautiful nature subjects, the kind of things I would like to emulate.  However, it was becoming more and more obvious that photographing an animal would be extremely difficult and overall hard to execute.  Instead, I’m thinking that taking a picture of an insect or arachnid like a butterfly or a spider would be much easier.  I know I have some nice spider webs in my front yard that look really amazing when they are covered in dew in the early morning.  Maybe that could be what is on my cover or perhaps on the two-page spread instead.

From my research, I have found a lot of different options, but I'm not ready yet to commit to any one direction.  My goal for the next week will be to have some concrete decisions made so that the planning can commence. 

Citations:

"Environmental Magazine Covers." Tomjroberts2's Blog. N.p., 07 Dec. 2009. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

"Top 10 Nature Magazines." All You Can Read. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

"Volume 543 Number 7643." Nature News. Nature Publishing Group, n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

Audience, Audience, Audience

In my last post, I talked about which genre I wanted to use for my project and quickly settled on nature/science.  With this subject area comes a corresponding target audience, so I set out to find out which one best suited my chosen genre and idea I had for the magazine.  

The search was not immediately fruitful, but I eventually came across this really interesting analysis map.  The website from which this picture came from contained very little text, but it did have some very important information.  This analysis map showed that Smithsonian and National Geographic, two magazines that I am interested in emulating, especially the latter, are predominantly read by males from 40 to 55 years old.  Looking at this, I saw immediately that there were some things I wanted to challenge.  I want to put forth a gender-neutral product that will be appealing to everyone, regardless of genre.  Still, I understand that the audience that is interested in science and nature is predominantly male.  As for the age range, it seemed just right.

So now I have an idea of the direction I would like to head in considering gender and age range, but there is still one more aspect of the target audience to consider:  socioeconomic status.  For this information I turned to The Pew Research Center.  In their article "Magazines: By the Numbers", the analyzed the ways in which magazine consumption had been changing through the year 2012.  One especially relevant piece of information was a line graph that showed that the people who read news magazines had annual household income of around $90,000 in 2011.  Further researching found that that income fell within the bracket for "middle class".  I think that this data is comparable to the economic status of the people who consume nature/science magazines.

Therefore, I conclude that my target audience is males (edging towards gender neutrality) between the ages of 40 to 55 and of middle class socioeconomic status.  Now that I have established both the genre of magazine and its corresponding target audience, I can really begin to consider the kind of look my magazine will have. (Stay tuned, "The Look" is next post's topic!)

Citations:
"Demographic Profiles of Magazine Audiences." Demographic Profiles of Magazine Audiences. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
Olmstead, Kenneth. "Magazines: By the Numbers." State of the News Media 2016. N.p., 31 Jan. 2012. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
"What Is Middle Class, Anyway?" CNNMoney. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.

Welcome to the Blog, Let's Talk About Genre!

This is my blog, where I will be documenting the process by which I create my magazine.  As I begin in this endeavor, I realized that I had a concrete list of things to consider:

• front page
• contents page
• double-page spread

But before I even get to the meat of the project, I have some important research to conduct.  (Tons of fun, I know right?)  So I must begin with the research, but what does that include, you may ask?  Well, hypothetical inquirer, I envision three major subject areas that I will tackle first.  They are genre, target audience, and the overall look I want to achieve with this project.  Obviously, each of these three different topics aren't completely cut and dry separate from one another, but separating them anyway is an easy way to organize them.  

Starting with the first of the three topics, I'll discuss the genre of magazine I want to produce.  My first task was to research the different genres there were.  I'm not sure what my expectations were, but I wasn't expecting nearly as many as I found.  From the website magazines.com, I was able to find an enormously extensive list of the many different categories of magazines!  That list was super long, so I can't really include it all in this blog post, but some of the genres that really stuck out to me were the ones listed under the "Science & Nature" section, which included "environmental", "nature", and "science".  The examples from these tabs were very similar to the kind of content I wanted to produce.  These included magazines from names like National Parks, Smithsonian, and National Geographic.  

After looking at and discovering the kind of genre I would like to use, I went on to see some prime examples.  The best place to do this seemed by looking at an article titled "Top 10 Nature Magazines".  This list included some of the same titles I had seen before but showed a clear distinction between two different types of this genre of magazine.  It's a bit difficult to label the two subsets, but the best way to describe it is that one looked more composed with few cover lines while the other boasted bright titles and lines of text that almost completely cover the main image.  I'm a fan of the former, which included examples like National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Popular Science.  

Looking at such great examples of the kinds of products I wish to emulate, I feel like I'm taking the first step toward creating my own magazine.  

P.S. Look forward to my next two posts where I will be first examining target audience and then overall look.

Citations:
"Browse All Categories." Magazines.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
"Top 10 Nature Magazines." All You Can Read. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.